I’m glad to announce the Trixionary is online and available to all unicyclists. The Trixionary is an online catalog to structure skills. Along with a trick many properties are saved, that describe each trick and also it’s relationship to other tricks. These relationships are very interessting and the graph is definitely a highlight of the Trixionary. Multimedia is supported through pictures and videos. Youtube and Vimeo are integrated out of the box and videos can also be uploaded manually. These videos can either demonstrate a trick or contain a tutorial to help visitors with learning instructions.

Here are some examples that showcase the Trixionary very well:

Spin – This is the most complete example of almost all properties that are archiveable per trick at the moment.

Hickflip – Ever wondered of which parts all these Urban tricks are composed of? The Trixionary takes care of this.

Please remember, this is an early version of the Trixionary, with also limited features. That means, at the moment there is only limited access for people who are able to edit the contents in the Trixionary. Though we are working on this and unicyclists who participated in the last two unicons will become access to the Trixionary later the year.
For some features I was unsure how to correctly implement them. E.g. transitions are not shown in the graph at the moment. Transitions are tricks where the start and end position are different, here are some examples: Riding to 1ft riding, 90° Unispin, Backspin, 1ft Wheel Walk to Standwalk, … Though some of them are considered to more a transition than others in regards to different understandings. As such some transitions can be shown immediately when the graph loads others when you select a trick in the graph and then there may still be some more types of transitions. How to determine which of these transitions can be shown and how can this work? These are for sure sport scientific questions yet most of the functionality in the Trixionary is available because prior questions like these have been answered.

Feedback is heartly welcomed. Please head over to the contact formular and send your inquiry.

Benefits of the Trixionary

At the IUF we have more plans on what we want to use the Trixionary for.

A place to collect and structure tricks, where interessted people can easily get the information they are looking for.

Help people learn unicycling by building a huge resource.

Education! This is a highly requested and wanted topic within the IUF. The Trixionary will become an important role here. Expect more plans on this later the year.

Science. The Trixionary is also a science tool. With all the properties saved, this allows certain operations to be handled with the Trixionary. Ever wondered about the difficulty of a trick? This question is unanswered, though with the Trixionary we have a chance to come closer to an answer.

History of the Trixionary

I would like to talk a little bit about the history of the Trixionary because it’s a long journey to where it is now. The first Trixionary was published in 2006 in german on einradfahren.de with a bigger update in 2010 after I become a unicycle freestyle coach and discovered some properties that tricks shared and connected them. The technical backend on einradfahren.de is outdated and had no future for further development. The IUF Trixionary is completely written from scratch on a new plattform called keeko. Also more research happened since 2010 which resulted in a write-up about structures in unicycling skills (german) in 2012. The IUF Trixionary is able to save all these new properties. More about the Trixionary can be read on my personal website (german) and an older blog post I wrote about the Trixionary (side-fact: the blog post from august 2012 mentions the re-release of the Trixionary at the IUF).

I am proud and happy to release the Trixionary, the power it offers, the ways we plan to use it at the IUF and of course a place for unicyclists to get information about tricks.

Unicon is over now so it’s time to start the new rulebook committee. After each Unicon, a new IUF Rulebook Committee is formed to develop the next version of the IUF rules. If you are interested in changing the current rules or creating new ones, please read on.

The members of the committee are typically people who have takes part at several Unicons and many other conventions and/or also hosted several conventions. …

We would like to ask YOU to provide us some nice unicycle related pictures for our website. Your picture will appear then on our start page so if you like to send us a picture, make sure that you have the legal rights for it and also add in the email, you send to us, your permission for the IUF to use it on the IUF website. Please send your picture to contact (at) unicycling.org
We wont be able to show all pictures at the same time but will rotate them time by time so yours should appear earlier or later.
Many thanks in advance!

David Weichenberger and me have prepared Workshops for Unicon 17 that are related to IUF topics and we would like to invite you to come and join us. The IUF meeting is too short to cover all what we want to talk about, so we created several workshops for certain topics. This is also an opportunity to have face-to-face discussion about rulebook topics (such as agegroups), that will save us a lot of time reading and writing afterwards.

Unicycling Spirit & Olympics

You all know the unicycling spirit and this is for sure one of the reasons to visit Unicon. With Olympics in mind, where there can only one discipline become olympic – will this be a good idea? What are better alternatives.

David has something to say about this. We bet you too! Join us and share your thoughts with other unicyclists.

New Freestyle Judging System (Prototype ready!)

After a couple of years of research and understanding freestyle, gossi created a new prototype for a freestyle judging system. It’s been written from scratch to really honour the sport achievement of freestylers.

This talk will include:
– Explaining freestyle – the way it really is
– A short analysis on the current freestyle judging system and what it actually judges (hint: decorations)
– Introduce the prototype
– How to develop and improve the prototype after unicon
– Discussion round afterwards

Unicycling Rules & Development

Developing Rules is a complex and endurance process with a high risk to get something wrong very easily. Unicycling rules never shined in their development, yet we are testing our rules at world championships. There is a high need to change that process, to deliver stable, reliable and tested rules for unicyclists.

Join in to learn what’s necessary for developing rules and discuss with all attendees ideas on how to develop next generation unicycling rules.

Age Groups Redesign & Kids Oriented Unicycling

Why would the IUF prescribe age groups? Is it to distribute the available awards evenly across the age spectrum of participants? Or is it to honour/acknowledge the inherent differences in physical capabilities that depend upon age? Or perhaps a bit of both? Either way, have age group boundaries been based on scientific analysis? Also, would we want to extend the age groups to the “older” age brackets? If so, how? And should age group boundaries perhaps be the same from event to event, and/or between disciplines?

The IUF Board have requested Klaas Bil and Benoit Gonneville Damme to organise this workshop at Unicon to establish an “Age Group Redesign” committee. This committee should work together remotely during the remainder of 2014 to fundamentally address all age group issues, and hopefully report their conclusions and recommendations to the IUF Board early 2015. We seek interested participants!

But wait, there is more. David works himself into a very interessting and uprising topic, which is kids oriented sports. Originally developed for athletics in germany and because of its succcess instantly adopted by soccer, wrestling, gymnastics and more are joining in. The revolutionary, remarkable and brilliant concept behind this idea, is to create events for kids which support their natural growth by setting up relevant competitions, giving them a proper education. It’s also time for unicyclists to jump on that train and work out competitions that work for young unicyclists instead of working against them, hindering their education. Of course, as you might already guessed, this also has a huge impact on age groups as well.

Based on the request of many riders and national federations the IUF Board decide last year that national and continental championships should be able to get the status to be an official IUF recognized championship. So we can announce now the first official European Championship UNIOEC 2015.
This event will happen in the first two weeks of August 2015 in Mondovi/Italy. You can find a first overview about the event here. The registratgion will open after Unicon.

With the closing of the Unicon 17 registration system coming soon, your dear organizers would like to take a moment to make some important reminders. If you have to read one newsletter from us, it is definitely this one… but you should still have a look at the first 10!

EXTENSION OF THE ONLINE REGISTRATION

In order to give you more time to check and edit your registration profiles if necessary, we decided to extend the last registration period until June 14th, midnight Montréal Time.

After this date, you will no longer be able to register for the event or update your registration information (personal information, competitions information). Remember that the date of birth provided will determine your age group for the events you compete in. Since no major updates to your registration will be accepted on site during Unicon, this is your last chance to register or withdraw from competitions.

IUF AND UNICON 17 COMPETITION RULES

The Unicon 17 website has been updated with the official IUF and Unicon 17 rules for easy reference. It is very important that you take a moment to read about those rules and comply with them during your competitions. Not wearing the required protection or not having the appropriate unicycle for your competition could lead to you being disqualified.

AGE GROUPS

Age groups for Track and Field, Road Racing, Freestyle, Trials, Speed Trials and Jumps will be determined after analyzing registrations. Preliminary startlists for these disciplines should be available shortly after the closing of the online registration. Please note that Muni, Team Sports, Street, Flatland and Slopestyle Street have categories independent from age groups and are therefore already determined by the 2013 Competition Rulebook.

SCHEDULE

We strongly suggest that you take the time to visit the Unicon 17 schedule on our website to be familiar with the latest changes that might have occurred in your disciplines.

ACCOMMODATION & BEDS

We would like to remind participants who will be experiencing the most extraordinary atmosphere of a Unicon, namely our accommodation center, that camp beds are available to rent for the duration of your stay to make it even more unforgettable.

TRANSIT PASSES – RENDEZ-VOUS MONTRÉAL CARDS

It is with great pleasure that we are unveiling the design of the Unicon 17 transit passes created in partnership with the Société de transport de Montréal. For those who proudly decided to go green this summer, this special card, named Rendez-vous Montréal, is a unique souvenir to bring back from your visit to Montréal.
You can now buy multiple passes with one registration! This means that parents and friends traveling with you to Montreal can now have access to this great discount through you! Add as many passes as you like and let them experience your host city like true Montréalers by discovering the city’s underground networks and its efficient bus system in comfort and speed.

This transit pass grants you access to the STM network (buses and subways) for a duration of 14 days and is available on our registration website at a discounted price only available for Unicon 17 participants. These transit passes will NOT be available on site at this discounted price, so don’t miss this chance to explore Montréal at your own pace at this incredibly low price of $34.50 CAD (including taxes and Unicon administration fees)!
Please note that the STM is granting all Unicon participants access to the whole Montreal public transport system at all times, with the condition that the unicycles are inside unicycle bags. If your unicycles are not carried in a proper bag, you will not be able to take the buses with it at anytime or use the subways during the rush hours. The rush hours are from the opening of the metro to 10.00, and from 15.00 to 19.00, during the weekdays.

Follow the links, check your registration profile and start packing your stuff for the biggest unicycle event of the year… two months to go.

It’s been a long time since Unicon 16 and Unicon 17 comes into sight. In Brixen the guys from unicycle.tv recorded tons of footage from all disciplines, the whole footage has a size of incredible 700 GB and has a very good video quality (1080p @ 25fps with 35-40 MBps). Jess Riegel made an exceptional documentary with that material. However, I realized a big pile of footage was untouched. In september 2013 I decided to look into it, because I (as a freestyler) was interessted in the routines from Unicon 16. The raw videos are great and it is a pity nobody breathed life into it. I m always looking forward to great freestyle videos and started editing right away. …